If you go by Rasmussen, Gallup, RCP etc etc President Obama is either ahead or tied with Romney. His likability factor is still at 65%. It’s pure bull. The only polls that really count are elections. The 2010 elections were a landslide for the conservatives. Since then if you listen to the talking heads the Tea Party is DEAD, the “Trend” is all towards the OWS crowd, and a major swing to the left. No one on the Right has a prayer.

Then there is reality. Yesterday was another Primary, In Wisconsin they had 5 Democrats running against Governor Walker. Now this is a recall election. The Unions have spent over 35 Million to crush Walker because he took away their collective bargaining rights for benefits. Now mind you before that the state was going to lay off 30% of their teachers. After the adjustment of FORCING the teachers Union to pay 10% of their benefits, and losing the ability to soak the tax payer not one teacher was laid off, but that’s irrelevant. He must be destroyed. Well the Governor who ran unopposed so not one Republican HAD to vote for him. Not one Republican had to come out to the polls at all. The race was to decide which of the Democrats was going to run against him in November. Governor Walker received more votes than all 5 of the Democrats combined.

In North Carolina, the State that the Democrats are going to hold their convention in this year because it’s a swing State had a vote on the Definition of Marriage. Now mind you they already voted once against gay marriages, but because Gay Marriage has been voted on in 32 States and has been defeated EVERY TIME, yet activist Judges keep overturning the will of the people NC voted 60-40 put wording in their state constitution that Marriage can ONLY be defined as a Union between One Man, and One Woman. Making it impossible for a judge to change the definition by fiat. It can only be changed by amending the State Constitution via majority public vote.

The best bit of yesterdays elections however was West Virginia. In WV in the Democrat Primary Federal Inmate No. 11593-051 – otherwise known as Keith Judd – won 10 counties and 41 percent of the vote. And that’s Democrats saying they would rather have a convict still in the joint as President over Obama….LOL

And no Phantom, I am galled by the tenacity of two fairly intelligent men, that have been wrong on just as many occasions as I have, who tend to speak as though they not only know and understand the rest of the country, but when they don’t they imply that those people aren’t as smart or as sophisticated as they are.

You know there is an ole saying, “your only as smart as where your standing”

Let me explain that to you. If you take a man raised in NYC and he is socially affluent, and generally successful. May even be considered a shark in his environment. Now drop him into Wheeling, WV, nothing will have changed about the man he would still be just as talented, but his skill sets wouldn’t fit. The same applies vice versa.

People in general are not dumb, and no one from any area is better, smarter or more refined because of where they live, the money they came from, or the school they went to. All men and women are equal. We are just raised different.

You said that Obama would lose in 2008. You were so sure of it. You make huge overarching statements about the real America when the people you know are just one of a large number of subcultures in a continent/country.

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All men and women are not equal.

Charles Manson does not equal Steve Jobs does not equal Mother Teresa does not equal The Suntan Lady from New Jersey.

Some are brilliant, some are idiots, some helped the world, and the world would have been better off if some had never lived.

They can be deemed equally by the law, but that’s a different thing. All men are not equal.

If so, I suggest you actually click on that link I posted. It isn’t only southern states that permit first-cousin marriage. Among the TWENTY(!) are California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and good-old-boy New York.

First cousin marriages are wrong. They are a remnant of the past. They are I believe quite uncommon in any of the states now.

The fact that one wrong thing is legal does not mean that other wrong things should be legalized.

The more I think about it, the more I conclude that Obama has already lost the 2012 election. He rode into office with a perfect storm at his back, but that won’t happen again. Especially not after yesterday’s ” own goal “.

I think that’s what we are all trying to point out to Troll. A person in New York and a person in West Virginia may well be equal under the law but that doesn’t mean they are equal in terms of ability, wealth or circumstances.

“My wife and I have no kids and don’t want any. That’s hardly a birth defect, and your comment trivializes birth defects suffered by countless children whose parents are/were first cousins.”

It doesn’t trivialise it. The fact is that a marriage between two cousins has a 96.5% chance of producing natural healthy offspring. Marriage between two people of the same gender has a 0% chance of producing natural healthy offspring.

The fact is also that couples of close relation have only a slightly higher chance of producing offspring with a congenital abnormality than non related couples and about the same risk as a non related couple in the 40s. The principle risk of relatives marrying is if cousins continue to marry through multiple generations.

So the main reason that we ban relatives marrying isn’t to prevent offspring being born with congenital abnormalities but simply, and in my opinion quite rightly, for societal reasons on issues of morality.

That’s a nice construct for the law to use, but some people are sons of bitches, some are saints, and most are in between. And none of them are ” equal “. Outside the law or public policy, the concept is positively stupid.

And don’t pull the God bit either. God sends people to hell who don’t toe the line, or so I am told, so he doesn’t think people are equal either.

His less than equivocal backing of it either shows one of two things. Either a) he supports it but isn’t that courageous, doesn’t want to rock the boat and so doesn’t do a huge amount to bring it about or b) he personally opposes it but isn’t that courageous and publicly supports it for political reasons.

The problem with that Troll is that if you try to assassinate the President for political reasons then it is normally planned. If it is planned then you are going to get caught. The only viable assassination attempts on Presidents from now on are lunatics (Reagan).

Because when the expectant mother is over the age of 40 the statistical likelihood of her giving birth to a child with congenital abnormalities is the same as it is when the child is being born to first cousins. So, considering that you want to ban it for the children (and not for the social and moral reasons) would consider a ban on all people over the age of 40 from being married and having sex?

“How about you—if they were gay would you wish to ban them from getting married or having sex?”

I have no issue with them getting married. If any gay man wants to marry a woman who wants to marry him then they are perfectly welcome to do so. And if gay people want to have sex then by all means. What happens in an adults bedroom is something I simply do not care about unless it is my own.

I think there is a difference between the Church and the faith. The paedophilia scandals, and more importantly their cover up, make me question the Church not my faith. The Church is human and will have human problems and needs to change to solve those human problems (and in my opinion has made significant progress in areas such as child protection). And the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of the clergy are good, decent people and shouldn’t be held back the few who commit such horrible acts. And, historically, the senior leadership of the Church wanted to protect the Church more than children, a balance that I feel in the more recent years has been reversed completely.

How do you separate real actions of the Church from your Catholic faith?

I can understand retaining an abiding belief in God, but how can you continue to worship Him within the walls of such profound Catholic hypocrisy?

Yes, the church is run by fallible men, but these particular men have spent the past one hundred years consistently covering up vile abuses. If I’m not mistaken, the current pope was at one time in charge of handling these scandals and he swept them under the carpet as fast he could.

I don’t understand how someone of deep faith could excuse such profound sin and ugly betrayal.

There is nothing wrong with the principle of having faith and believing in God. There is a lot wrong with believing other human beings have a hierarchical authority to tell you they know the rules you must follow to practise your faith accurately.

“How do you separate real actions of the Church from your Catholic faith?”

With great difficulty, obviously. Mostly because the fatih comes from God, not the Church. It is only administed by the Church. And even in that the majority of the people administering the faith are good, decent people. The overwhelming majority of the clergy did absolutely nothing wrong. Only about 3% of the clergy were involved in abuse (too high a number but still much lower than most people probably think) and an even smaller number involved in the coverup. Thus why should the 95%+ of good, honest decent priests and other clergy be tarred for the actions of a small number and in the inaction of an even smaller number.

Additionally the hirearchy of the Church needed to do more and, in my opinion and experience, they have in the timeframe that the majority of my religious beliefs were formed or solidified.

“Yes, the church is run by fallible men, but these particular men have spent the past one hundred years consistently covering up vile abuses. If I’m not mistaken, the current pope was at one time in charge of handling these scandals and he swept them under the carpet as fast he could.”

The case against the then Cardinal Ratzinger is complicated. Techincally his role, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was to advise the Bishops over clerical sex abuse and Vatican authorities seemed for decades unwilling to do it, leaving it purely to local Bishops to deal with. This is why the majority of the coverups end at a diocesan level. While he had the ability to oversee the response of the Bishops neither he nor his predecessors wanted to get into the ecclesiastical pissing contest of overruling local bishops especially over an issue that could be destructive for the Church.

In 2001 Cardinal Ratzinger convinced Pope John Paul to declare clerical sex abuse a sin, not only against the child, but against the sacraments, thus granting the the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which Cardinal Ratzinger was the Prefect, the direct role in investigating clerical sex abuse. In effect it was to remove the power for individual diocises (under the authority of the individual Bishop) to investigate (or not investigate) the instances of clerical sex abuse. It was a major watershed in Vatican history and Cardinal Ratzinger developed a very good reputation for dealing with these cases and gained a lot of praise from people with experience in prosecuting sexual abuse cases.

The Vatican required a culture change in terms of clerical sex abuse and I firmly believe that Pope Benedict was one of the major driving forces behind that culture change.

“I don’t understand how someone of deep faith could excuse such profound sin and ugly betrayal.”

I don’t excuse it and, outside of the children and their families, it is also the people of faith who have been most beytrayed by the Church’s actions and inactions. Personally I think if anyone (clergy or otherwise) is guilty of child sex abuse they should be castrated and locked away in a prison for the rest of their lives.

Also, if the Catholic faith said it was alright for priests to do this then I would have issue but it doesn’t. Child sex abuse is one of the gravest sins that can be committed so the fact that some priests didn’t live according the faith doesn’t make me question my faith.

Faith is not belief in the irrational but rather belief in something without complete decisive evidence. Religion is thus like Evolution for example.

Faith is regularly rational and I have come to my faith after rationally thinking it through and coming to the conclussion that it makes the most sense for me.

“There is nothing wrong with the principle of having faith and believing in God. There is a lot wrong with believing other human beings have a hierarchical authority to tell you they know the rules you must follow to practise your faith accurately.”

I agree. But if you want to be a member of an organisation then it isn’t ridicolous for that organisation to set out a number of rules for you to follow to be able to call yourself a member of that organisation. You can have faith without being in the Catholic Church but you can’t be a member of the Catholic Church without believing Catholic beliefs.

You do not defeat terrorism by rewarding terrorists, regardless of how many bleeding heart liberals argue otherwise. Want to know where that flawed approach leads to? Read UNIONISM DECAYED 1997-2007 - It's my first book and it explains what happens when you seeek to appease terrorists and call it peace. It's available right now for ATW readers so make sure you get your copy by emailing the editor! This is the book that dissents from the herd mentality that doing wrong can lead to being right. It doesn't and this book spells out WHY.

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